THE RENAISSANCE OF PSYCHOLOGY 



the complete organism that determines what shall act as a 

 stimulus and what form the response shall take. Because 

 the clue to behavior resides in the organism, some psy- 

 chologists have preferred to speak of this approach as 

 organismic psychology. Why the behaviorist should choose 

 to ignore the Hamlet of the play is not wholly clear; it 

 certainly simplifies the plot, but it denatures the drama. 

 It may be through dread of the later consequences, for 

 Hamlet soliloquizes, which is a form of introspection and a 

 manifestation of consciousness — both anathema to one 

 adhering to the act as the sole datum. As Kohler, the lead- 

 ing exponent of Gestaltism suggests, the strict behavior- 

 ist (such as Weiss and Meyer) is determined to model the 

 S-K reaction on a physical pattern, thus robbing it of its 

 vitality. "But between the two terms of the sensorimotor 

 circuit there is more terra incognita than was on the map of 

 Africa sixty years ago"; and it is, as we have seen, to the 

 successful exploration of that psycho-neurological province 

 for sixty years that we owe the present rich knowledge of 

 the psychic organism. 



Gestaltism properly emphasizes that we react always to 

 the total situation; it is not a stimulus, not a single condi- 

 tion, but a configuration that induces a reaction. The 

 workman reacts to the whistle by going to work in one 

 setting (time) and by quitting in another; and he doesn't 

 react at all if it isn't his whistle. The phenomena are so 

 complicated that it is often a problem to determine just 

 what phase, what combination, what Gestalt sets off the 

 reaction. The ingenious technique devised to this end is 

 well illustrated in Kohler's "The Mentality of Apes"; for 

 Gestalt psychology has contributed importantly to the 

 analysis of animal behavior. It is equally in line with the 

 genetic sequence. For as we grow, we react to the (appar- 

 ently) same situation more completely, ever to more 

 complex Gestalts. This applies to emotional as well as to 



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